Ladies!
Do you have a cervix? A uterus? Maybe some ovaries?
Yes?
Have you ever stopped for a second to think how clean they might be?
You haven't?!
Well, it's time for that to change sweetpea!
Not content with instructing us that our vaginas are too hairy (wax them!), stinky (Vagisil!), oozy (pantyliners!), and haggard (vagacials!), the beauty industry is now reaching whole new heights and coming after our reproductive organs.
According to Gwyneth Paltrow's unfortunately-entitled website Goop, the latest must-have beauty treatment in Lalaland is a steam clean of your vagina, uterus "et al".
Now, I may be being over-sensitive given that at this precise pregnant moment I cannot SEE my vagina, let alone get down with beautifying it, but seriously - I can't be the only one thinking here: WHAT THE ACTUAL...?
We're meant to STEAM CLEAN our bits now?! Shoot boiling water vapour up into our most intimate of places, in the name of 'hormonal balance' and hygiene?
I get how steam can be an effective means to rid our homes of dirt - I've pored over the Lakeland catalogue and seen the wonderful things a good steam clean can do to a rug - but do our nether regions really need such an intensive scouring?
Last time I heard, mother nature had fixed it for us so our wonderful bits were self-cleaning?
And I'm no scientist, but surely heating our intricately balanced insides to unnatural temperatures would actually ENCOURAGE the growth of bacteria?
Or have I got the wrong end of the douche?
Either way, I for one am DONE with this societal obsession with women being unclean.
Our periods are shameful, our cervical mucus is disgusting, our smells are wholly unpalatable UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!
While men get away with just a squirt of shower cream and a spritz of Lynx (I've certainly not seen anyone marketing exfoliating smeg gel), we women are meant to spend hours locked away in our bathrooms 'dealing with' the horrors of our sex.
And when we're done plucking out our hair and plugging our fluids and perfuming our flaps, we're encouraged to 'indulge' ourselves with costly foof pampering treatments too? Because our ladyplaces are just crying out for 'REJUVENATION'?
I call bullshit people. I've had a baby and I can promise you, my vagina's done an incredible job of rejuvenating itself.
And I've got better things to spend my money on than Femfresh.
And if Gwyneth Paltrow, or Mr Beauty Industry Boss (cos I bet it was a Mister that came up with this shiz), thinks I'm going to waste my precious time on this planet worrying about my UTERUS being unclean, when it REGENERATES EVERY FRIGGING MONTH... well, then they're taking me for a c*nt.
This blog post was first published on Lotte Lane's blog.